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Ugh. Not this HN trope again. "Web is bad, the old days were good, designers are the worst, developers are the best" Lazy, inaccurate, and offensive. How is t

Ugh. Not this HN trope again. "Web is bad, the old days were good, designers are the worst, developers are the best" Lazy, inaccurate, and offensive. How is this limited to the web? 'The Desktop' suffers significantly more from not having a single, understandable paradigm. Is this UI modal? If I click this will it 'pop' me to another view? Or will it open a new window? Is that window represented in task bar/switcher/dock/whatever? How do I get back to where I was before? Not to mention the issue that both macOS and Windows suffers from being in the middle of a UI-kit transition, with a bunch of half-and-half apps across the system, with the new system being of... dubious quality (I'm staring at you, new macOS Settings) I think overall, I think there is a positive trend for usability of software on both the web and 'desktop' (whatever that means). But still, just like 20 years ago, people can still make bad software. Edit: lol - just now as I'm trying to uninstall some AMD drivers, I get a dialogue box asking me to visit a long Microsoft Store URL, and it's neither clickable nor copyable. Desktop is perfect!

immibis 3y ago
Microsoft webified the Windows desktop. That doesn't mean the desktop desktop is or was bad, as opposed to the web desktop.
blowski 3y ago
The demands on UX and UI have fast outpaced the ability of designers and their software to deliver on it. As new requirements come along, we are forced to make different trade-offs to those we made in the past, and perhaps that leaves those of us who don't need the new requirements feeling like the software has "got worse", ignoring the benefits to others. To take one example, 99% of monitors in 1997 were 1024x768 CRT with single pixel density, which freed designers to assume that's what their end user was on. No such standard exists today.
agumonkey 3y ago
Even if parent was a bit stuck in a rant (which I'm guilty of) I think a few forces were at play during the 90s desktop apps. Limitations made apps more focused on bringing rapid enough functionality in a stable manner. Web does offer too much rope to hang your users with. My bet it that, if computing doesn't evaporate in the next decade, there will be a middle-ground solution.

immibis 3y ago

Microsoft webified the Windows desktop. That doesn't mean the desktop desktop is or was bad, as opposed to the web desktop.

blowski 3y ago

The demands on UX and UI have fast outpaced the ability of designers and their software to deliver on it. As new requirements come along, we are forced to make different trade-offs to those we made in the past, and perhaps that leaves those of us who don't need the new requirements feeling like the software has "got worse", ignoring the benefits to others. To take one example, 99% of monitors in 1997 were 1024x768 CRT with single pixel density, which freed designers to assume that's what their end user was on. No such standard exists today.

agumonkey 3y ago

Even if parent was a bit stuck in a rant (which I'm guilty of) I think a few forces were at play during the 90s desktop apps. Limitations made apps more focused on bringing rapid enough functionality in a stable manner. Web does offer too much rope to hang your users with. My bet it that, if computing doesn't evaporate in the next decade, there will be a middle-ground solution.